An Easter Concert 75 Years Ago

Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Day in 1939 to an audience of 75,000 on the Mall. Cabinet members and senators are seated onstage.

Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Day in 1939 to an audience of 75,000 on the Mall. Cabinet members and senators are seated onstage. (Harris & Ewing Collection of the Library)

EditorialThe Hartford Courant

Easter is a holiday of hope. It was on Easter Sunday 75 years ago that Marian Anderson, whose grandfather had been a slave, sowed hope in the heart of the nation with her legendary performance.

The famed contralto sang "America" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 before a biracial crowd of 75,000 people stretching to the Washington Memorial, as well as to a radio crowd of millions. The gathering was a precursor to the large peaceful civil rights protests of the latter half of the century.

When she began the lyrics "My country 'tis of thee," it was a seminal moment for the United States, a milestone in — and some suggest the start of — the modern civil rights movement. And when she changed the words "of thee I sing" to "to thee we sing," it was a moment that united all Americans, regardless of color or creed.

The soloist, despite her international renown, had been barred from singing in Constitution Hall, the national headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, because of the color of her skin. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and invited her to perform instead at the memorial to the Great Emancipator.

It is shameful that it took another 16 years for her to become the first black person, male or female, American or foreign, to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera."

Condescended to in the United States, she found wider fame singing in Europe. But she never made a fuss about the humiliation to which she was subjected at home, where she would be turned away at hotels and would eat in her room to avoid a scene at a restaurant. She has been described as an "accidental pioneer" because she just wanted to sing.

Danbury was her home from 1940 to 1992, in a farm that she and her husband, architect Orpheus Fisher, bought. She died in 1993. Her studio was donated to the Danbury Museum.

On this day, it's heart-swelling to hear her "America" sung so beautifully, without rancor and with such faith in the unfulfilled ideals contained within. Watch it at courant.com/mariansings.